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The first space experiment to protect the Earth from a collision with a huge asteroid is being held today (27th).
NASA is experimenting with crashing an unmanned spacecraft into an asteroid. In fact, if the asteroid hits the Earth, it will deflect the Earth in this way.
This is Reporter Junmo Moon.
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Last November, NASA launched an unmanned experimental spacecraft, the Dart, from the Vandenberg base in California.
After more than 10 months of flight, Dart approached the asteroid 'Dimorphos', which is about 11 million km away from Earth, and collided with this asteroid the size of a soccer field at 8:14 am Korean time, at a speed of 22,000 km/h. do.
The size of Dimorphus is 160m in diameter and weighs at least 8 million times that of a dart spaceship.
Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos, which, if successful, is expected to shorten its orbit by a few minutes as its orbit becomes smaller inward.
[Tom Statler / NASA 'Dart' Program Manager: Dimorphos is a very small planet.
I've never seen it up close and I don't know what it looks like.
It is very difficult to collide (dart) with such an asteroid.]
If the collision is unsuccessful, the dart switches to fuel-saving mode and tries again two years later.
The collision will be captured and transmitted by a subsequent micro-satellite, but it will take at least a few weeks to determine if the orbit has been corrected.
There are 2,200 asteroids classified as potentially dangerous because they approached within 7.5 million km of Earth, but it is estimated that there are about 15,000 near-Earth asteroids that have not yet been discovered.